


onryō

by byronicmaiden



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Feminist Themes, Force Ghost Padmé Amidala, Ghosts, Monologue, Out of Character, Revenge, Women in Refrigerators, girlhood gothic, kinda?? she might be a hallucination, listen i just wanted to write about padmé’s righteous anger, so she might just be saying what vader already thinks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:41:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23012674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byronicmaiden/pseuds/byronicmaiden
Summary: “Look at what you’ve done.”Padmé Amidala’s voice is not the sweet, lilting chime that Anakin Skywalker once adored. It is not the high-pitched, girlish giggle he fell in love with. It is cold and empty, and biting with many teeth.Dying will do that to you. It will make you cold.Her eyes are icy and burning at the same time. Her gaze could turn him to stone.“Look at what you’ve done to me, Anakin.”//Darth Vader is visited by a memory.
Relationships: Padmé Amidala & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Darth Vader
Comments: 11
Kudos: 35





	onryō

“Look at what you’ve done.”

Padmé Amidala’s voice is not the sweet, lilting chime that Anakin Skywalker once adored. It is not the high-pitched, girlish giggle he fell in love with. It is cold and empty, and biting with many teeth.

Dying will do that to you. It will make you cold.

Her eyes are icy and burning at the same time. Her gaze could turn him to stone.

“Look at what you’ve done to me, Anakin.”

Her face that was once so pink and flushed is grey, rotting. Her brunette curls are stringy, dangling over her face, with dead flowers caught in the tangles. She’s still wearing the dress they buried her in. That necklace he made her, the little Japor snippet, she still wore it. It hung tightly around her throat, like a noose.

He breathes out a ragged, pained breath, and it’s like his lungs are on fire, grating against his ribs, smoke and ash and hellfire. A wounded dragon.

He doesn’t say anything, just looks at her from beneath that shiny helmet, those wide insect-eyes, like a praying mantis.

“Are you proud of what you’ve done? Do you just love it? I hope you do. I hope you can’t stand yourself.”

Tears fall down her cheeks and turn to sharp icicles, dangling from her face. Her lips are blue and cracked. Her neck is ringed with a sickly violet bruise in the shape of his fist.

“Show me your face. I want to see the thing you’ve become.”

He hesitates; he feels so small under her gaze. He raises his arms and unlatches the airlock, the mechanical hiss chiming as he removes the black mask. He feels his breathing slow down, building in his chest, like it was being sucked out and tucked into a secret balloon.

Her grey lips twist into a grimace.

“I hope it hurts. I hope every breath you take, every second of the rest of your miserable life– I hope it’s nothing but pain.”

“Padmé– “ he gasps, dragging himself on his knees to her, clutching his chest. His eyes fill with tears and they burn, every part of him burns.

But she glows with ghostly coldness.

“Do you know what the worst part of being dead is, Anakin?” she asks.

“Tell me,” he groans. “Tell me so I can take your pain away.” He reaches for the hem of her dress and she yanks it from his claws.

“It’s not the empty space where my heart once was. It’s not the perpetual chill running up my spine. It’s the fact that I can never move on. I will never get past this. I loved you when you killed me, and now, for all my rage– I still love you. And I hate it.”

“I never wanted to hurt you...I never wanted to cause any of this...my sweet Padmé...my angel...” he gasps and sputters like a dying machine.

“You never wanted to hurt me. You never wanted to hurt anyone. You never wanted to be a problem, either, but you were. You never wanted to hurt me but you raised your hand and made a fist. You never wanted to hurt me, but you reached into the Force and found that violent red string and wrapped it around my throat. You did it for so long. You wanted to do it more.”

“I know I did. But I loved you, Padmé. I still love you,” he says.

“You loved me,” she repeats. “And thousands died for it.”

It takes at least six minutes to die of strangulation. After five minutes, the heart cells begins to kill them selves. After seven minutes, the brain begins to die, and even if they save you, you’ll never be the same. After ten minutes, there’s no hope for recovery.

Padmé Amidala clung on to life for what felt like forever while her husband and his master fought like toddlers. She laid respectfully off to the side, careful not to step on the toes of The Anakin and Obi-Wan Show, and looked at the blurry night sky as she drifted in and out of consciousness.

She wondered, then, if maybe this was all she was– not one half of the galaxy’s doomed star-crossed lovers, not a glowing queen in golden embroidery.

Just a set piece in Anakin Skywalker’s tragedy.

Just something to be devoured, to fuel his rage.

Just another wife, murdered by her husband, a dead woman with her whole life ahead of her. She was doomed from the start. She was built to die, to be a tragic gem in his crown of backstory.

Because he was the Chosen One, he was Anakin Skywalker, and she was a nameless dead mother who was just beautiful and sad, like all those other dead mothers.

She thought of her mother and her father and her sister. She thought of the lake house on Naboo, the lake house she would never set foot in again.

She thought of her babies. Her babies, who she would never meet.

If not for them, she would’ve let go right there. She would’ve just given up and let herself die– but she had to stay alive, for them. She lived for them.

_Take care of them, Obi-Wan_ , she’d sobbed. _Don’t let him find them._

She thought of her people on Naboo, the people she’d fought so hard to protect, and realized it was her fault.

Because without Padmé Amidala’s love for one violent man, there would never be any Empire, any Order 66, any dead Jedi kids on the temple floors.

“I just...I don’t know why you did all this.” Her steely resolve begins to drop. Even now, she is weak for him. “I just wanted to live with you. I just wanted a normal, happy life with you...”

Vader looks at the ground, too ashamed to meet her eyes.

“Because I love you...and I never wanted to lose you...” he moans.

“All those years, all those awful things you did, all because you were so scared you would lose me. So afraid you would lose your grip on me. Well, guess what? You did. You did lose me. You lost me on Mustafar, when you pressed down on my windpipe with your Sith magic tricks. And you know what I think, Anakin? I think you did it because deep down, you wanted to hurt me. You’ve always wanted to hurt people.”

The Empire. Order 66. It was all her fault. It belonged to her. Our Lady of Horrors.

She had enabled Anakin Skywalker’s addiction to violence. She had stroked his head and kissed his tears and told him there was nothing wrong with having feelings, after he poured his sins into her lap and sobbed about killing children.

She had shut her eyes to his darkness because she did not want to see it. When he reached for her throat, she just looked away, and told herself it was her own hair strangling her. When he killed those children– she just pushed it to the back of her mind. Because she was selfish. She knew it. She was too selfish to care when he hurt other people, and then when he finally hurt her, it was too late. She was just as much to blame as he was, and in some ways, all the anger she spit at him, all the hate she spewed– it was directed at herself, too. At the stupid girl who died for love.

If she hadn’t been so stupid, so blind to the blaring red flags being waved in her face, none of this would’ve happened.

But it was too late.

“I tried so hard to help you, and it just made you angry, because deep down, you wanted to be angry. I tried to be the loving, understanding wife. I tried to stroke your hair and hold your hand and let you be the hero everyone adored, even if that meant I was slowly disappearing into nothing. Slowly being devoured by your greed and your lust for power. Even now, what am I?”

Her eyes narrow.

“A figment of your imagination. A ghostly echo trapped in the Force. An extension of the great Darth Vader.”

A name on a grave. A rotting corpse in the ground. She didn’t get to fade away mystically like he did. She didn’t get to ascend to a higher plain of existence, to live out her afterlife in peace.

She didn’t even get to be a real ghost.

“I tried and tried and it was never enough. I tried to put you back together when you broke, fix you up and make you perfect. I gave you everything I had– I gave and gave and you took and took. I poured all my love into you until I was empty.”

The man, the machine, the monster below her sobs, a horrible, inhuman human sound that makes her want to take him in her arms and kiss him and comfort him. She still wants to help him. That’s the worst part. She was never going to grow from the pain, or forgive and forget. She was a prisoner inside herself.

And the worst part is, she doesn’t want to be angry. She wants to let go. She wants it so bad.

She wants to take him in her arms and kiss his pain away. To say she forgives him and loves him.

And if he hadn’t killed her, she could’ve.

But he has turned her into this thing, this vengeful spirit, this angry scorned wife. This monster of hatred. He has turned her into this because, deep down, this is what he always wanted her to be.

If he’d just not done it, she could close her eyes and drift upwards to the heavens.

(But she needs to do this. Ghosts always have a goal. If not, there’s really no reason to rise from the grave.)

She is trapped by her own rage and need for revenge.

She is, essentially, in the exact same place he was.

Except he is alive. He could change the tide. He had the key to both their cells. He just refused to use it.

“I loved you so much, Anakin. I tried, I really tried, to do everything right. I gave you all the love I could possibly give you.” Tears well in her eyes as she leans down, takes his marred face in her hands.

“But I have no more love left.”

Anger, vengeance, fury. They are not the way of the Jedi.

But Padmé Amidala is no Jedi.

Sure, she’d fought with them when she was alive. But when you’re dead, you tend to adopt a one-track kind of thinking. You forget about the beige-clad monks you hung out with in life. You don’t really care about anything but yourself.

Because _yourself_ is the only thing you have. And you barely even have that.

Vader lifts one large black hand, tries to grasp her bony fingers, but she slips away, fading into grey smoke, blown away by the Force.

Padmé Amidala is gone.

Padmé Amidala is dead.

Her legacy lives on as a makeup-caked face on a stain glass window, a face no one even remembers. A face with no name.

Padmé Amidala died because Anakin Skywalker killed her. She lived a few moments after his phantom fist reached for her open throat.

But he still killed her.

Padmé Amidala didn’t die from a broken heart. She didn’t just randomly decide to give up on life. Or maybe she did. Maybe, just maybe, _lost the will to live_ and _murdered by the person you love most_ were synonymous.

It doesn’t really matter how you want to package it. The truth remains. Padmé Amidala died because her husband wanted to kill her.

Believe it or not, sometimes, that’s really all it takes.

**Author's Note:**

> okay. a couple things.  
> 1\. i understand padmé may behave ooc in this fic– but please remember, she might not entirely be real. she might be vader’s imagination. and if she is real, well, she’s been dead for decades. her husband is an imperialist sith lord. her children have been stolen from her. i’d say she has reason to be angry and mean. plus, she’s a ghost– in mythology, ghosts are often far crueler than their living selves.  
> 2\. i decided to write this after watching a video about laci peterson (again), and then a video about susan powell, and then a video about shannan watts...i was thinking about all these women who were murdered by their husbands and i wanted to give them some form of justice. i wanted to see padmé amidala rise from laci peterson’s grave and avenge her. so, ultimately, i wrote this for them. for all the real-life padmés, all the dead, forgotten wives.  
> 3\. i’m not anti-anidala!! i love anidala for what it really is: a tragedy of violence and romanticiztion of that violence. i didn’t write this because i hated anakin or thought he “didn’t deserve” forgiveness in the end and thought i could write a “better ending”. padmé is a multi-faceted character: she is capable of being angry and forgiving at the same time. however, i see anidala getting, for lack of a better word, romanticized by fans and i just wanted to illustrate how truly tragic and horrifying this relationship really was.  
> 4\. “onryō” is a japanese term for a vengeful spirit, often a woman who has been wronged by a man.


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